


Mindscape

by scribefindegil



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Drabble, Ficlet, Gen, Post-Canon, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6102713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The house that had haunted his mind for thirty years burned away. Drabble about what grows in its place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mindscape

The house that had haunted his mind for thirty years burned away, the treasures and horrors locked in its rooms swallowed up. He floated in cold, heavy darkness, a featureless ocean that closed impenetrably over his head. As time passed and his family poured stories into him, the void filled with bright fragments, tumbling together. They flashed through his mind with no sense of order—Mabel’s laughter, the Shack under a blanket of snow, a knife biting into his arm. Sometimes the memories fell into line and he could list every snowglobe supplier he’d used in thirty years, and sometimes he drifted in darkness, feeling the memories float just out of reach as he struggled to remember which cupboard he kept the coffee in.

The children were his beacons, leaving breadcrumb trails of glitter and broken pens across his mind. When he felt like he was drowning, their light was what he would follow, clinging to it until his head broke the dark surface and he could breathe again, their love shining down on him like stars.

Slowly, he learned how to navigate the memories, how to trawl the dark waters for more fragments of his past, how to net them together, building up the shape of his life out of glimmering strands of memory the way Mabel built up her sweaters.

There were things lurking in the depths that would arise in his dreams and try to swallow him, but he held tight and awoke to his brother whispering, “It’s all right. You’re all right,” and the monsters in his mind retreated.

The house that had haunted his mind for thirty years burned away, and the ocean washed away its ashes. He sailed along shoals of memories in a boat that was hazy at first, a childhood dream patched together with hope for the future, and slowly turned into a solid replica of the home that he and Ford shared. Glowing, knotted buoys stretched out around him in a slowly growing patchwork, and above him, mixed with faded, imaginary constellations, the Big Dipper twinkled next to an endless shower of shooting stars.


End file.
